Dylan Coghlan scored his first playoff goal and Carter Hart made 36 saves as the Vegas Golden Knights opened the Western Conference Final with a 4-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night.
DENVER — The Western Conference Final didn’t need a slow burn for Vegas to declare its intentions. Dylan Coghlan. playing with the confidence of a defenseman who’d waited his turn. scored his first playoff goal to get the Golden Knights moving early. and Carter Hart answered throughout as Vegas held off Colorado 4-2 on Wednesday night.
Vegas struck first with the game already tilting toward them before the late drama arrived in the third period. Colorado had been trailing 3-0 when Gabriel Landeskog finally pulled the Avalanche within one on a power-play goal with 2:21 remaining. Nic Dowd then put the matter away with an empty-net goal.
For the Golden Knights, the scoring came from multiple directions. Pavel Dorofeyev and Brett Howden also found the net. and Valeri Nichushkin made it 3-1 with a goal at 5:53 of the third. Hart finished with 36 saves. while Vegas piled up 23 blocked shots and spent long stretches controlling the flow in front of Scott Wedgewood. who made 24 saves.
Even so, the win didn’t come with the kind of clean finish that lets a coach relax. Trailing 3-0 changed the temperature of the game, and Vegas learned that quickly. John Tortorella said, “We didn’t play a flawless game by any means. We have work to do.”
Colorado’s urgency grew after the third-period surge. but the Avalanche’s mistakes earlier in the night became the cracks Vegas kept pressing into. The Golden Knights took advantage of defensive miscommunications by Colorado as the Avalanche juggled their blue-line pairings with Cale Makar sidelined by an upper-body injury. That lineup uncertainty fed the opening that Coghlan needed.
Coghlan’s goal broke a scoreless second period when he “sneak[ed] into the middle of the ice. ” lining up a shot that went through the pads of Wedgewood. It was Coghlan’s first NHL goal since Dec. 17, 2021. The 28-year-old spent most of the season in the American Hockey League and entered the series with recent playoff experience—he had played the last five post-season games after Jeremy Lauzon’s recent injury.
Tortorella didn’t hide his pride in the moment. “When you say Dylan Coghlan to me, I think of no fear,” Tortorella said. “I think he’s one of our best defencemen since he’s been with us and in the lineup. … He’s a bit unflappable.”
Hart’s goaltending set the tone for the defense’s heavy workload. He made one sprawling save after another. including help from the post when Logan O’Connor’s liner clanged off it in the first period. Hart later framed it as respect without hesitation. “We know they’ve got a lot of skill on their team, and we respect that,” Hart said. “But you can’t respect them too much. and I thought we did a good job of defending and limiting their time and space.”.
Mitch Marner added an assist for Vegas, extending his post-season total to 19 points—seven goals and 12 assists. Dorofeyev grabbed the team’s attention with his offensive pace as he scored his NHL-leading 10th goal of the post-season. Vegas also did not have injured captain Mark Stone in its lineup.
Even with Colorado pushing late, Tortorella stuck to what Vegas tried to do from the start. “We’re trying to play our game, not worrying too much about countering off another team,” he said. “They feel very comfortable in it.”
Colorado, for its part, knows how quickly momentum can disappear. After the Avalanche dropped their first game at home in this run—ending a stretch that included five straight home wins through the first two rounds—Nathan MacKinnon admitted the damage they did to themselves.
“It was kind of a nothing game, and then they got a few goals,” MacKinnon said. “Really good team, obviously, but I thought we did a lot of damage to ourselves. Just guys kind of everywhere. Execution, like I said, needs to be better. Obviously, we’re capable of being a lot better than that.”
The absence of Makar drove more than just personnel changes. Colorado tried different combinations without him, and that instability showed. Avalanche coach Jared Bednar described it as a ripple effect, while still insisting they had to find a way forward. “There’s definitely a trickle-down effect to that,” Bednar said of not having Makar. “But he’s not playing. We have find a way.”.
Coghlan, who bounced around over his career with stints in Carolina and Winnipeg after his first two seasons with Vegas, spoke about how comfort matters just as much as preparation. He returned to the Golden Knights last July in part because of the bonds he’d formed.
“This is probably the best I’ve felt in my whole career,” Coghlan said. “Whoever it is I’m playing with, I’m very comfortable out there with them. They make it pretty easy on me. We have some pretty world-class players.”
Landeskog, who scored late on the power play to spark the only real Colorado comeback window of the night, acknowledged the series would demand patience. “Definitely things we can get better at,” Landeskog said. “But we knew it was (going to) be a long series.”
The Golden Knights now lead the best-of-seven series after opening it with a road win. Game 2 is Friday night in Denver, where Colorado will try to answer for the early deficit and, just as importantly, for the execution mistakes MacKinnon pointed to right after the final horn.
In the background is another reminder that this matchup doesn’t always start tidy. The Golden Knights and Avalanche have met in a best-of-seven series for the second time. In 2021, Colorado won the opening two games of their second-round series before Vegas captured four straight.
Vegas Golden Knights Colorado Avalanche Western Conference Final Dylan Coghlan Carter Hart Scott Wedgewood Gabriel Landeskog Nic Dowd Mitch Marner Valeri Nichushkin Cale Makar John Tortorella Jared Bednar Mark Stone Game 2 Friday